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I strongly agree with the first two lines of Gypsy Spellweaver's answer:

Neither is better. What is true for one student may not be for another.

 

Studies can show trends. Students are not trends; they are individuals.

(emphasis original)

Sure, laptops have their benefits. When typing, I can put down far more words per minute than when hand-writing, plus I don't have to worry about legibility dropping. I usually open up to a notepad program and nothing else when in this situation.

But in most cases, the temptation is too great. After that browser's already open, it takes a lot to focus back on the lesson. A lot of people never even start there. I've been in graduate school classes with students who had their laptops open to full-screen Facebook, and next to 50-year-old career changers paying for second degrees doing the same thing. On the other hand, some of the most successful moderators on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange are teenagers (or, at least, were, when they were elected). I think the answer here comes down to the maturity level of the specific students you happen to have in your class, which is something only you can know.

I see the value in "code-alongs" and other in-class coding exercises, but I don't buy that laptops are essential for such activities. There are several alternatives.

  • Pencil and paper. Have 'em write it out instead of typing it out. Students are likely to push back on this because of some misguided association between computers and code, but let's face it, computer science is ultimately more about thought processes than the act of coding. If your brain understands the reason why that recursion works, does it really matter whether you wrote it on paper or on a screen?

  • A separate computer lab. I've been fortunate enough to always attend and work at schools that offer computer labs. Often, they were adjacent to or at least near CS classrooms. If that's the case for you, you could "save up" the code examples from the lecture portion of your class (maybe have the students write out some quick ideas as pseudocode) before heading into the lab to try them out. That was very effective for lower-level CS classes when I was a student.

  • No-stress pop quizzes. If you don't have a lab, you could always fall back on a technique other disciplines have been using for years: the in-class, ungraded survey. Introduce a new concept, then put up a slide with a multiple-choice option and say "Which of these is the correct way to implement what we just talked about in Java?" One option might have a syntax error, another might have an off-by-one error, that sort of thing. When I was an undergrad, I had to buy a fancy electronic "clicker" that was set up to interface with a receiver in the lecture hall so my response could be tracked for a participation grade. For a smaller class, I like the idea of holding up colored or numbered cards. (This also keeps people engaged throughout lectures... not to imply that you're a boring teacher!)

  • Discussion. Always a mixed bag of an option, but you can try taking pair programming to the extreme and writing the code "on the big screen" by soliciting input from the students.

I strongly agree with the first two lines of Gypsy Spellweaver's answer:

Neither is better. What is true for one student may not be for another.

 

Studies can show trends. Students are not trends; they are individuals.

(emphasis original)

Sure, laptops have their benefits. When typing, I can put down far more words per minute than when hand-writing, plus I don't have to worry about legibility dropping. I usually open up to a notepad program and nothing else when in this situation.

But in most cases, the temptation is too great. After that browser's already open, it takes a lot to focus back on the lesson. A lot of people never even start there. I've been in graduate school classes with students who had their laptops open to full-screen Facebook, and next to 50-year-old career changers paying for second degrees doing the same thing. On the other hand, some of the most successful moderators on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange are teenagers (or, at least, were, when they were elected). I think the answer here comes down to the maturity level of the specific students you happen to have in your class, which is something only you can know.

I see the value in "code-alongs" and other in-class coding exercises, but I don't buy that laptops are essential for such activities. There are several alternatives.

  • Pencil and paper. Have 'em write it out instead of typing it out. Students are likely to push back on this because of some misguided association between computers and code, but let's face it, computer science is ultimately more about thought processes than the act of coding. If your brain understands the reason why that recursion works, does it really matter whether you wrote it on paper or on a screen?

  • A separate computer lab. I've been fortunate enough to always attend and work at schools that offer computer labs. Often, they were adjacent to or at least near CS classrooms. If that's the case for you, you could "save up" the code examples from the lecture portion of your class (maybe have the students write out some quick ideas as pseudocode) before heading into the lab to try them out. That was very effective for lower-level CS classes when I was a student.

  • No-stress pop quizzes. If you don't have a lab, you could always fall back on a technique other disciplines have been using for years: the in-class, ungraded survey. Introduce a new concept, then put up a slide with a multiple-choice option and say "Which of these is the correct way to implement what we just talked about in Java?" One option might have a syntax error, another might have an off-by-one error, that sort of thing. When I was an undergrad, I had to buy a fancy electronic "clicker" that was set up to interface with a receiver in the lecture hall so my response could be tracked for a participation grade. For a smaller class, I like the idea of holding up colored or numbered cards. (This also keeps people engaged throughout lectures... not to imply that you're a boring teacher!)

  • Discussion. Always a mixed bag of an option, but you can try taking pair programming to the extreme and writing the code "on the big screen" by soliciting input from the students.

I strongly agree with the first two lines of Gypsy Spellweaver's answer:

Neither is better. What is true for one student may not be for another.

Studies can show trends. Students are not trends; they are individuals.

(emphasis original)

Sure, laptops have their benefits. When typing, I can put down far more words per minute than when hand-writing, plus I don't have to worry about legibility dropping. I usually open up to a notepad program and nothing else when in this situation.

But in most cases, the temptation is too great. After that browser's already open, it takes a lot to focus back on the lesson. A lot of people never even start there. I've been in graduate school classes with students who had their laptops open to full-screen Facebook, and next to 50-year-old career changers paying for second degrees doing the same thing. On the other hand, some of the most successful moderators on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange are teenagers (or, at least, were, when they were elected). I think the answer here comes down to the maturity level of the specific students you happen to have in your class, which is something only you can know.

I see the value in "code-alongs" and other in-class coding exercises, but I don't buy that laptops are essential for such activities. There are several alternatives.

  • Pencil and paper. Have 'em write it out instead of typing it out. Students are likely to push back on this because of some misguided association between computers and code, but let's face it, computer science is ultimately more about thought processes than the act of coding. If your brain understands the reason why that recursion works, does it really matter whether you wrote it on paper or on a screen?

  • A separate computer lab. I've been fortunate enough to always attend and work at schools that offer computer labs. Often, they were adjacent to or at least near CS classrooms. If that's the case for you, you could "save up" the code examples from the lecture portion of your class (maybe have the students write out some quick ideas as pseudocode) before heading into the lab to try them out. That was very effective for lower-level CS classes when I was a student.

  • No-stress pop quizzes. If you don't have a lab, you could always fall back on a technique other disciplines have been using for years: the in-class, ungraded survey. Introduce a new concept, then put up a slide with a multiple-choice option and say "Which of these is the correct way to implement what we just talked about in Java?" One option might have a syntax error, another might have an off-by-one error, that sort of thing. When I was an undergrad, I had to buy a fancy electronic "clicker" that was set up to interface with a receiver in the lecture hall so my response could be tracked for a participation grade. For a smaller class, I like the idea of holding up colored or numbered cards. (This also keeps people engaged throughout lectures... not to imply that you're a boring teacher!)

  • Discussion. Always a mixed bag of an option, but you can try taking pair programming to the extreme and writing the code "on the big screen" by soliciting input from the students.

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Piyush Parikh
Piyush Parikh
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I strongly agree with the first two lines of Gypsy Spellweaver's answer:

Neither is better. What is true for one student may not be for another.

Studies can show trends. Students are not trends; they are individuals.

(emphasis original)

Sure, laptops have their benefits. When typing, I can put down far more words per minute than when hand-writing, plus I don't have to worry about legibility dropping. I usually open up to a notepad program and nothing else when in this situation.

But in most cases, the temptation is too great. After that browser's already open, it takes a lot to focus back on the lesson. A lot of people never even start there. I've been in graduate school classes with students who had their laptops open to full-screen Facebook, and next to 50-year-old career changers paying for second degrees doing the same thing. On the other hand, some of the most successful moderators on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange are teenagers (or, at least, were, when they were elected). I think the answer here comes down to the maturity level of the specific students you happen to have in your class, which is something only you can know.

I see the value in "code-alongs" and other in-class coding exercises, but I don't buy that laptops are essential for such activities. There are several alternatives.

  • Pencil and paper. Have 'em write it out instead of typing it out. Students are likely to push back on this because of some misguided association between computers and code, but let's face it, computer science is ultimately more about thought processes than the act of coding. If your brain understands the reason why that recursion works, does it really matter whether you wrote it on paper or on a screen?

  • A separate computer lab. I've been fortunate enough to always attend and work at schools that offer computer labs. Often, they were adjacent to or at least near CS classrooms. If that's the case for you, you could "save up" the code examples from the lecture portion of your class (maybe have the students write out some quick ideas as pseudocode) before heading into the lab to try them out. That was very effective for lower-level CS classes when I was a student.

  • No-stress pop quizzes. If you don't have a lab, you could always fall back on a technique other disciplines have been using for years: the in-class, ungraded survey. Introduce a new concept, then put up a slide with a multiple-choice option and say "Which of these is the correct way to implement what we just talked about in Java?" One option might have a syntax error, another might have an off-by-one error, that sort of thing. When I was an undergrad, I had to buy a fancy electronic "clicker" that was set up to interface with a receiver in the lecture hall so my response could be tracked for a participation grade. For a smaller class, I like the idea of holding up colored or numbered cards. (This also keeps people engaged throughout lectures... not to imply that you're a boring teacher!)

  • Discussion. Always a mixed bag of an option, but you can try taking pair programming to the extreme and writing the code "on the big screen" by soliciting input from the students.